


Bruises Shaped Like Sanctuary

by Rasborealis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Auror Harry Potter, Drarropoly: A Drarry Game/Fest, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rough Sex, Sex in a Potions Lab
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:07:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21599671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rasborealis/pseuds/Rasborealis
Summary: Harry hates it, the journey through the grey corridor, but it's a necessary evil, just like so many things in his life these days. Even so, he knows there's a bright light behind one of the doors, and its name is Draco Malfoy.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 6
Kudos: 122
Collections: Drarropoly 2.0 - A Drarry Game/Fest





	Bruises Shaped Like Sanctuary

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks go once again to Etalice who did a quick & amazing job with beta, and who inspired all the angstiness.

Harry almost wished that the stairs were the sort that would creak. At least it would have broken the damn silence. Alas, they were not, and all he could do was grit his teeth and try not to let the unnatural quiet get to him.

Yet it did, just like every time he made the journey through the Complex. He didn’t know why, after so long, he still expected it to be different.

Something brushed past him like a puff of air. He didn’t turn to look; he already knew that he wouldn’t be able to see anything. Whoever else was making their way through here wouldn’t be able to see Harry either, such was the magic of the Complex. It was only a small part of what made the place such a veritable haven for shady dealings and general unsavoury business.

Harry just wished it didn’t make for quite such unnerving surroundings.

He reached the top of the stairs and passed through a doorway, into a corridor. It was darker here, more shadows reaching for him and making him shiver. Sometimes he thought that the closer he came to his destination, the harder the place made it on him, as though testing whether he was truly serious about needing to get there. Maybe the peculiar non-space was indeed sentient. It wouldn’t have surprised him.

The grey twilight blurred his vision, making his surroundings look secretive and unreal. He counted doors as he passed them because getting lost in here was a terrible idea, and going through the wrong door not much better.

Eventually, he reached number twenty-nine, a dark, faceless rectangle just as nondescript as all the others. Harry placed the palm of his hand on it and in the next moment found himself sucked through with a horrible scrunching sound and deposited on the other side.

The change was so drastic that it always took him a long moment to reorient himself.

The air was warmer, the colours of the lab such a contrast to the dull grey wasteland outside that Harry was momentarily blinded. There were sounds again too: potions boiling and bubbling away, fire crackling, a knife chopping ingredients.

Malfoy’s low mutter, and his sharp intake of breath when he caught sight of Harry.

Steps, then a warm hand on his cheek.

“Getting worse, isn’t it?”

Harry didn’t bother denying it, both because he knew it  _ looked _ worse, and also because he now had to come to the lab far more often than every two months, the way he had at first. 

“I won’t be able to contain it forever.”

Malfoy’s voice was soft, his words a slap to Harry’s face. He knew, of course he knew, but being reminded was no less awful for it.

Gentle fingers traced the side of his face, down his neck, the touch soothing as though in apology for the harsh truths he so hated to face. Harry shivered when fingernails scraped along the back of his spine and up into his scalp, making it tingle, outlining the too-familiar shape of the curse.

When Malfoy’s face finally swam into focus, it reflected the softness of the touch for only a moment before he smoothed out his features in reaction to the sharpening of Harry’s gaze. His hand dropped away, and then he turned briskly, motioning for Harry to follow. The path to the cabinet at the back of the room had become familiar by now and so had the wand movements Malfoy traced to take down its wards. Still, Harry wouldn’t have attempted it himself, he knew the potions displayed in their gleaming bottles were too risky to touch for someone untrained. Even Malfoy, who might just be the most skilled living Potions Master in Britain, cast a variety of protection spells on himself and bid Harry step back before he reached for a crystal-bright potion in a stoppered vial, as well as a small, square-shaped flask that seemed to contain nothing at all. He handed the square flask to Harry, who wrapped both hands around it and felt the strange warmth it exuded.

A flick of Malfoy’s wand lit a small stone cauldron off in one corner. He made his way to it – Harry following like an obedient crup – and filled it with a thick, sludgy grey mass that made up the base for the potion. More wand movements directed ingredients onto the adjacent work surface, many of them expensive, some illegal. The vial of bright liquid levitated nearby until the grey sludge was boiling, and then, Malfoy poured the shimmery contents into the cauldron, patiently, drop by drop. As the base brightened slowly to a clear violet colour, he moved over to the workbench and started to chop, mince, and crush the other ingredients.

Harry waited as patiently as he knew how. Malfoy loathed talking while he brewed, or really any sort of reminder that someone else was there at all, and since he was the only one who could brew this – the only one with access to all the ingredients, the only one with enough skill to modify the potion to Harry’s exact needs, the only one Harry  _ trusted _ – it wouldn’t do to antagonize him.

Funny thing, that, Harry thought as he watched the potion cycle through an array of sparkling colours, how it had only taken one utterly fucked-up raid, one infinitely wrong decision, to lead him to such an unlikely place. All he’d wanted to do was save a child’s life. But he’d made the wrong call, and the child had died, as had Harry’s Auror partner, and Harry himself had taken a nasty curse by one of the smugglers, one the man had powered with his own death. He would have died there too, just like most everyone else who’d been at the hideout, if Malfoy hadn’t pulled him to safety.

If Malfoy hadn’t immediately cast every counter he knew to stabilize Harry, to contain the curse.

So Harry, numb and shell-shocked, had let him go instead of arresting him, against protocol. And then he’d cast a glamour on the side of his head and lied to the healers that he was fine, against protocol. And then he’d lied again, desperate to keep his job, to get a chance to make up for his failure, and had told his superiors that it wasn’t him who had made the call. Not only against protocol, and against the law, but also against every ethical code Harry lived by. 

One day had taken him from a model Auror to a desperate, self-loathing man barely clinging on.

The potion turned emerald. Malfoy made a satisfied sound and raised his wand to set a timer, and Harry sighed with relief. He uncorked the flask in his hands, wrapped his lips around the mouth of it, and sucked the contents into his lungs. The area at the centre of the curse tingled as the numbness it caused slowly subsided. It wouldn’t last for more than an hour, not unless he took the second potion exactly thirty-seven minutes after the first gaseous one that tasted oddly like lime and Brussels sprouts when he breathed it in.

“Working?” Malfoy asked hoarsely, turning his way and acknowledging him for the first time in over an hour. He looked in equal measures anxious and greedy.

“Yeah,” Harry whispered.

They surged together like they were starved for each other, kissing hard and fast, fingers already loosening clothes. Harry had the presence of mind to shift them to the one corner of the lab free of dangerous implements and substances, but then Malfoy latched on to his throat and sucked, making him moan like the desperate slut he was. His hands shook as he tried to blindly shove Malfoy’s stupid work robes away, to find skin, and  _ fuck _ , there were too many idiotic fastenings, and he was already too far gone to attempt a spell.

Malfoy laughed; a hard, breathless sound full of exhilaration. He had a far easier time with Harry’s shirt and trousers, of course, and Harry’s trembling increased under the warm, soft touch he found so addicting. It had been so long, too long, the need was consuming him. He screamed out his frustrations, hands tearing at cloth until Malfoy pushed them away and did it himself, and there was skin, so much bare skin, thank fucking Merlin.

“Can I?” Malfoy asked hoarsely, and Harry knew very well that he didn’t mean the hand he’d already wrapped around Harry’s cock.

“Yeah,” he said anyway. Immediately, hot breath brushed the spot between his neck and shoulder, and he tried not to wince, he really did, but it was impossible when Malfoy latched on and bit down to the point of white-hot pain blinding Harry to everything else.

Slowly, other sensations filtered through the acute stinging and throbbing, like the way Malfoy’s hand was stroking his cock in just the right way, gripping hard and twisting, forcing moans from Harry’s throat. He was rutting against Harry’s hip, leaving slick trails of precome on the skin, but it took a few seconds until Harry had the presence of mind to touch him in return.

He didn’t enjoy the biting, it was too hard, too painful, too  _ much _ , but Harry knew both that he deserved the agony of it and that Malfoy needed it to get off. Neither of them knew why Malfoy’s pleasure centre was so hardwired to the urge to bite down, but it didn’t fucking matter, did it, when his hand was slick on Harry’s cock and his teeth bruising deep into his skin over and over and over.

“Please,” Malfoy breathed into his skin and bit again, quick and sharp. “Please, I need it.”

Harry’s moods and needs varied every time he came to the lab, and so did Malfoy’s, and they didn’t always line up perfectly. Today, though, Malfoy’s plea suited Harry just fine, and he didn’t even bother agreeing. He shoved Malfoy away and spun him around and then shoved him further, into a convenient marble work counter. Malfoy gasped out a pained breath when he hit it. Harry didn’t bother to check if he was fine, didn’t even really fucking care, really, because pressing against him chest to back and feeling Malfoy press back seemed far more important. The skin contact was heavenly. Harry drank it in greedily, running his hands down the pale chest, sides, flank, and _ fuck _ , Malfoy was moaning because he needed it too.

Neither of them had much of a chance for this sort of intimacy. Malfoy made people freak out when he bit them too hard; he’d told Harry he couldn’t fucking stop himself when he was out of his mind with lust, when he was desperate to come and couldn’t, and he’d never found anyone else who welcomed the punishing pain the way Harry did. As for Harry, he couldn’t risk falling asleep next to someone and having his glamour fade, so he had no options but quick fucks in the loo at a bar, or in a back alley by a club. Those encounters were cold and perfunctory, and he hated that, hated the lack of touch and connection and honest, passionate heat.

Now, he knew that Malfoy could fulfil that desperate need, could give him warm skin to touch and let him build on the connection they’d always had, even when they’d hated each other, long ago. Harry knew him, knew the way he arched his back when he was truly desperate, knew the way he’d succumb to begging if Harry pushed him past that point.

“Tell me,” he growled into Malfoy’s ear, covering his body and pressing him into the cold stone counter, thighs and hips, and chest too as he forced him to bend forward.

“No, just…just…”

And sometimes, Harry wouldn’t insist, but today he wanted it, all of it, fucking  _ needed _ it like breath. “Tell me.”

“Fuck me,” Malfoy growled, voice deep and trembling, but it wasn’t good enough, not nearly, and they both knew it. “Ah! Fuck me till I’m screaming, till I can’t breathe, please, please, make me lose my fucking mind, make me hurt, make me…make me…”

It was a good thing Malfoy has cast a prep spell or two while he’d still held his wand, by the cauldron, because they were both far too frantic and needy to do it now. Harry palmed the lovely arse he was pressing his hips against, eased off just enough to slip a finger down the slick crack and press it in Malfoy’s hole just a bit too hard, forcing a delicious sound from his throat. It was how they did things, always  _ too hard rough urgent needy desperate… _

Malfoy mewled and trembled harder as he endured Harry pushing deeper relentlessly, adding a second finger much, much too fast. “Fucking get to it,” he hissed, with enough venom that Harry hurried to comply.

He propped one arm on the counter by Malfoy’s head for stability as he lined himself up with the other, and when he pushed, Malfoy turned his head and sunk his teeth into Harry’s forearm, vicious and deep.

His vision whited out, agony and bliss washing over him. He knew he was yelling out in pain, but the only thing his instincts would let him do was thrust, push and pull, grab on to Malfoy’s hip in a bruising grip with the arm that wasn’t busy being mauled. His faraway mind marvelled at the tightness, the heat, the sweetness with which Malfoy surrendered even as his teeth rendered Harry’s forearm numb and were maybe even drawing blood. It had happened before.

Harry hadn’t told Malfoy how much he’d loved it.

He found a rhythm, hips slapping deliciously against Malfoy’s arse with every thrust. He could feel muscles shift as Malfoy propped himself up on his forearms, mouth torn free now so he could scream every time Harry surged forward again. Each of the sounds made Harry’s blood boil just a little hotter, and so he reached forward blindly, found a fistful of silky hair, and yanked it backward just to tear another hoarse scream from Malfoy’s throat and set his body to buck and writhe…

Harry had no words for how good it felt.

He heard a scrabbling sound and realized it was Malfoy desperately clawing the counter, body still arched backward so gracefully under Harry’s grip. His throat was working, but no sound coming out, so Harry eased up until he heard Malfoy draw a deep, rasping breath.

“Fuck me harder, Potter, fucking wreck me already.”

Harry’s vision blurred again as the words wound their way under his skin and triggered a burst of desperate, purely animalistic need. He snapped his hips harder than he’d thought he was capable of, a good dozen times until the tightness in his balls started feeling unbearable, and his abs clenched and liquid fire spiralled up his spine. He yelled again, his throat was fucking  _ stinging _ , he convulsed as his body was wrecked by a powerful spasm, two of them, three, four, five, six, seven, weightless bliss.

His mind wasn’t working yet when he felt himself shoved back hard; he grunted, hit the wall, fell drunkenly to his knees. Fingers delved into his hair and yanked, his jaw was wrenched open painfully, and while he still shouted out, Malfoy shoved his cock into Harry’s mouth and halfway down his throat. It was all he could do to keep from thrashing around and fighting back. He gagged, jerked, worked to keep still, to keep his throat open and let Malfoy fuck into it. The breathy moans were music to his ears.

“Fuck, Potter, your fucking throat, oh Merlin  _ fuck!” _

It was almost enough to get Harry hard again, that mindless litany, and  _ god _ , the way Malfoy was  _ using _ him…

A particularly hard jab caused him to start gagging again, and Malfoy kept a tight hold on Harry’s hair and rode it out, groaned with each painful spasm, rolled his hips and eased himself even deeper with brutal, selfish greed. Harry couldn’t even feel his throat past the hellish burn that made his eyes water and his head swim, he couldn’t breathe, he felt himself drooling and thrusting his tongue out in a futile attempt to somehow make it stop. Darkness was creeping in on him; he had to breathe or pass out, no way around it.

Another deep, drawn out moan and a throbbing sensation on his tongue told Harry that Malfoy had finally tortured him enough. He could barely even  _ feel _ the thick liquid running down his throat, Malfoy was lodged so deep and had brutalized him so ruthlessly. 

And Harry’s cock was once again rock hard.

He coughed when he could finally breathe again, but that didn’t stop him from greedily sucking in air as he waited for the spots dancing across his vision to vanish. Dimly, he heard Malfoy cursing some more and felt a hand stroking his hair and face. He relished feeling it even in the area the curse usually kept numb, treasured it, because who knew how long the potions would still be able to help him retain sensation.

When Malfoy shoved him again, he fell to his side, was rolled to his back. He still couldn’t see much, everything was blurry and streaky and faraway, but he could make out the blond, pale figure descending on him. Long fingers wrapped around his oversensitive cock and caused him to wince.

“Suck it up,” Malfoy’s soft voice commanded him. Harry squeezed his eyes shut because he knew, he knew what was coming, and he knew it would hurt, but it would be so very good in the end. He allowed the lithe body to straddle him, didn’t fight when Malfoy eased Harry’s cock back into his arse. It was too much, all of it far too much, too tight, too hot, and he whimpered because he was so spent and he couldn’t, he  _ couldn’t… _

“I love it like this.” Malfoy’s voice was still soft, caressing, his movements fluid and gentle like the tides. “I fucking love how it feels, having you in me after I’ve come. I’m so loose, and you…you feel like you’re burning me from the inside.”

Harry whimpered some more. It hurt, god, it  _ hurt _ .

“Do you like me like this?” Still so soft, how could a voice sound like silk brushing his skin? “Do you like it, feeling me wet with your come? How loose you’ve fucked me, how open I am for your cock? Tell me, Potter, fucking say it.”

“Yes.” Harry’s voice burned just like the rest of him, his throat not nearly recovered, still half in shock. “Yes, fuck, I love it, I do, just please,  _ please…” _

Malfoy rose and fell faster, sighed contentedly as he leaned forward until his hair tickled Harry’s face. Harry tensed, opened his mouth to tell Malfoy that no, it was too much, he couldn’t take another–”

Teeth dug deep, too deep  _ again _ , he would walk away with so many bruises, he would look at them, green and purple and yellow, and remind himself that he deserved them, that he was a liar and a cheat and a coward, and  _ god _ it felt so good to surrender to that torturous agony he hated so much at the same time.

The sensation was replaced with one hand brutalizing his nipple while the other closed around his throat and squeezed, and yes that was it, too much, so good, the all-consuming pain made him soar and his body tight and his helpless broken wrecked moans echoed in his head as he came a second time, came, came, came…

When he had fought his way through the fuzziness in his body and mind, he opened his eyes again to Malfoy drawing something with his finger on Harry’s belly, smearing wetness across it as he did. He’d orgasmed again as well, then, had made sure that he’d wrung the last bit of pleasure out of both of them.

A chime sounded.

Malfoy sighed and swung himself off Harry, grabbed his wand and cast a cursory cleaning charm over himself. He probably expected Harry to do the same. But no matter how gross it was, Harry was loath to wash away the evidence of their tryst so soon. When Malfoy had turned to slip back into his robes, he pulled on his trousers over his dripping cock, pulled down his shirt to hide the mess Malfoy had made on his belly.

He met Malfoy by the cauldron. The emerald green potion was ready for him, washing mint over his tongue as he drank it, a kindness Malfoy did him to mask most of the horrid taste. Every swallow was agonizing.

“I’ll have a new batch ready to brew by the time you need it,” Malfoy said, clipped now, distancing himself from his emotions, Harry assumed. He could see the tension returning, the regret about what they were and couldn’t be.

“Thank you,” he said, pained, barely able to get the words out, he was that hoarse. “I owe you a lot.”

“We’ve had this discussion, Potter,” Malfoy said tiredly, wrapping his arms around himself, looking more vulnerable than he was probably aware of. “You don’t owe me. Get out.”

It was the same reply he received every time. Harry wondered if Malfoy even still believed it.

He nodded and handed the vial back, and then turned to start on his trek back down the soulless, grey corridor that would suck the feelings of peace and happiness and satisfaction out of him until he left the way he’d come, forlorn and drowning and barely hanging on.

Harry stilled, halfway to the door, and closed his eyes.

“I do, though,” he said. “I do owe you.”

_ “Get out!” _

The words were laced with so much venom, fear and barely subdued panic, that at any other time, Harry would have backed off and obeyed and left Malfoy to his voluntary prison until circumstance forced him to return. He wasn’t sure what was different, this time. He didn’t know why he was consumed by the urge to shatter those flimsy walls and see what would happen. He had never dared before.

“And you know,” he continued, voice cracking, “how I feel about you. I’ve never said it, but you  _ know _ .” Not a guess or an accusation, just truth.

“Yes.” A whisper, a breath, nothing more.

Their emotions were such a tangled mess, too complex to follow any of the threads, but Harry was tired, he was so tired of pretending there was nothing there at all.

“I’ll wait,” he said. “I know you’re not ready, but I’ll wait, I swear I will.”

“Get out.”

“No.” Harry flexed his fingers, tried to find words, the  _ right  _ words, but there was no such thing. “Not yet. Not until you look me in the eyes when you say it.”

The silence was all-consuming. Harry clung to the last shred of his determination with all the strength he possessed.

Steps. An intake of breath, uneven, shaky. Steps, closer. A soft exhale.

“Please don’t do this to me,” Malfoy said as he stepped in front of Harry. “Please.”

“Why is it so difficult to believe that I want this?” Harry asked. “That I want you.”

Malfoy looked at the floor. “Because it’s you,” he said, “and it’s me. Because we’d be a fucked-up mess going down in flames even if it was true.”

“You don’t know that.” Harry wanted to reach out so desperately, but he was convinced that if he did, if he brushed his fingertips across the porcelain skin and traced the veins barely shining through from underneath, Malfoy would shatter into dust. “You’re right, I’m fucked up, of course I am, but you’re the only one who makes me feel like…like that isn’t all I am. You’re the only one who knows all the darkest parts of me,  _ really _ knows them, and you don’t condemn me.”

“It isn’t my place to do that,” Malfoy whispered.

“Why not?”

“Fucking  _ look at me _ , Potter, why do you think? I’ve got a mark on my arm that tells you more than I ever could about why I’m the last person who should be judging anyone; I hide in a place brimming with dark magic, brewing illegal potions with unethical ingredients because it’s all I’m good for, all I  _ can _ do!”

He had finally lifted his head to look at Harry, grey eyes flashing with self-loathing and anger.

“And you feel better when I’m here,” Harry realized,  _ finally _ , “and you don’t think you deserve to.”

“Get out,” Malfoy said again, but it was feeble, unconvincing.

“No,” Harry said again, and stepped forward, which put them so close together that their exhales mingled.

Malfoy sucked in a breath, lips parted, and Harry waited patiently.

“I’m not ready,” he breathed eventually, and it wasn’t what Harry longed to hear, but it was good enough for now.

“But you will be?” he asked.

Malfoy took a very long time to answer, so long that Harry had decided he wasn’t going to. But the word slipped out with a shallow exhale, fragile and very nearly indiscernible. “Yes.”

“Then I’ll wait for you,” Harry said, because it was true, and also because it made the grey world that his life had become just a little bit brighter.


End file.
